Delpit - The Silenced Dialogue (Blog A)

 The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children

By Lisa D. Delpit

                          

Three Talking Points:

1. "It's really hard. They just don't listen well. No, they listen, but they don't hear." (page 280) Delpit uses interview quotes to show the exhaustion of multiple Black people who have had the same experience with white people. Each person states that many white people listen but they are not actually understanding or hearing what is being said. This exhaustion is seen throughout this article and the many different people that are interviewed.

2. Delpit argues that while, "many liberal educators hold that the primary goal for education for children to become autonomous, to develop fully who they are in the classroom setting without having arbitrary, outside standards forced upon them," parents of students from groups other than the 'mainstream culture', "want to ensure that the school provides their children with discourse patterns, interactional styles, and spoken and written language codes that will allow them success in the larger society." (page 285) These different goals for education highlight the divide and misunderstandings that can occur between these two parties.

3. "If we are truly to effect societal change, we cannot do so from the bottom up, but we must push and agitate from the top down. And in the meantime we must take the responsibility to teach, to provide for students who do not already possess them, the additional codes of power" (page 293). This is a call to action from Delpit for white people to use their privilege and power to explicitly teach others how to gain success/power in our society. 

Argument Statement:

Lisa Delpit argues that students must be explicitly taught "formal conventions" as well as when it is appropriate to use this language AND should be able to practice their own linguistics. She argues that in order to both celebrate our students' diverse backgrounds and cultures, and to prepare our students for success in a white-dominant America, we should directly instruct our students about when and where it is best to use the two differing linguistic styles. She also mentions that this change must be initiated by the people in power in order to support real change in our society.